


prabhava

by Medhasree



Category: Baahubali (Movies), Hindu Religions & Lore
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, Geography, History, Legends, Maahishmati, Multi, Pre-Canon, Rivers, Sivagami Learns, stories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-15
Updated: 2019-06-15
Packaged: 2020-05-12 05:22:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19222456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Medhasree/pseuds/Medhasree
Summary: The title 'Prabhava' stands for both impact and origins, and both apply. The myth in the fic is a casual reworking of the legendary tale of Mahishasurmardini. And Mahishasura's mother was supposedly a she-buffalo named Mahishi... The play with all the 'Mahish'-words here is perhaps my most favourite thing about the fic.Heavens, this is so strewn with foreshadowing and references - I am absolutely embarrassed!Really, Sivagami might be the only saving grace.And I am so sorry that I am late. It may not qualify at all, but I fell asleep (on my computer desk, no less - a first - I had thought only my study table would ever be the victim of my drooling) after writing this at 2 am, and I am only getting to editing now. I am counting on Avani di being lenient. *hides*Thanks to all for reading this. Kindly leave a word or two. Bricks and tomatoes are welcome too (no eggs, though - I prefer eating them). :D





	prabhava

**Author's Note:**

  * For [weaslayyy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/weaslayyy/gifts), [MayavanavihariniHarini](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MayavanavihariniHarini/gifts).



**|**   **prabhava** **|**

Her mother-in-law the Queen is far too often seen with correspondence and balance sheets, things deemed too trivial for the King to be bothered with, and too crucial for noblemen to handle. Ideally, the burden should fall upon the Prime Minister and other advisors to the Throne, but the Queen always insists.

Sivagami had been awestruck at first, and then fond, that the Queen spends her working--and sometimes, even her waking--hours, doing what she has spent her childhood mastering. She laughed in her private quarters after she made sure no one was around and about in sheer glee that all the strings she had pulled have come to hold such a beautiful knot.

She has trained her mind in balance sheets and numbers, correspondence and scripts. What the Queen does, she knew she could do far better.

So she went on to extend a benignant hand of help. The older woman raised her eyebrows in surprise. The Queen’s thick lips pinched, then smoothed out in a smile. She kept her frame facing the desk, and nodded at her daughter-in-law.

If only Sivagami had paid as much attention to people and the language of bodies as she had to scraps of paper and ink bottles.

She knows the workings of profit and loss, knows the right bargain to make for good grain in exchange of the best of Maahishmati’s spears, knows how the numbers fit into the equation, knows the unpredictability of variables.

She knows not the terrain over which the correspondence travels, the boundaries of which the papers speak, the laws that the scripts evoke, the history that the numbers hint at.

 _Recognise what you want, see if that belongs to you. Most times, it won’t. So makes it yours._ Hadn’t Father always said that?

So she went first to the Queen and made humility hers. She took muted zest in the Queen’s initial surprise, and bore in silence her subsequent scoff and the crudeness with which she took the documents from her hands. She bit her tongue and lowered her head in the way this foreign Queen believed to befit a new bride and a daughter-in-law of the Throne.

Summer afternoons in Maahishmati are unforgiving. Dust blows from the southern fields evacuated for wars that haven’t confronted the kingdom for decades now, and fills the corridors through the windows and courtyards that abound Maahishmati’s architecture.

The royal library, frequented only by the Prime Minister and the rare laughter of noblemen’s kids, is especially miserable at such times, courtesy its location at the far southern end of the palace.

Maahishmati certainly doesn’t have over-much care for her history and that of her neighbours; the royal anthem seems to be their sole source and expression of patriotism. Understandable that both the princes insist on being ignorant, one obsessing over a throne he doesn’t understand the merit of and one hopelessly ineffectual in his obligations.

Sivagami intends to change that. (Is that not what she came here to accomplish?)

Maahishmati deserves more, and she will give her all she can with her dying breath if so required. That, she has decided, aided by her father’s kind assurances, is her purpose.

Anything else than that, than the sustenance of Maahishmati’s cheapening honour, would be too light for the weight she knows she’s capable of exerting.

 

The library is well-maintained enough to breathe clean. The enclave housing texts on Maahishmati itself is neat and organised. That is not her destination, no. She intends to study her prospective enemies without, before she searches for suitable allies within. The dustier shelves hold the desired information about the surrounding lands. 

Sivagami strides to the middle of the room, peering over the dusty map engraved on wood, demonstrating the relief and lay of the kingdom. Her finger traces the indigo paint of the River Mahishi, a tributary of the Jeevanadi.

From her father, she has learned responsibility, but it is her mother who taught her to dream. Stories of the Mother Goddess, depicted fastidiously in her mother’s paintings . . . Sivagami bottles the sudden burst of sorrow in her throat, and swallows hard. Longing seizes her chest, and a reminder of her sleepless nights in this palace slows her breaths.

There goes a legend . . . about the origins of the river.

Mahisha of yore had demanded death at the hands of no man.

Priests claim that Mahishasura, demon unparalleled, overleaped the supremacy of the Mother Goddess and the craft of the Trimurti. But Mahisha was a son of Maahishmati--unfortunate, but the truth she has been told--before he was an Asura. No son of Maahishmati forgets his place, as vicious as they might get. They look high, but not beyond the sky.

The Mother Goddess did not kill Mahisha because he defeated the Devas. She punished him because of the terror he seeded in the hearts of all women, terror enough to never let the thought of resistance cross their minds, terror less than what might end all terror.

Fear of him reached even the Mother Ganga, and she came to flow by his birthland to lenify him. Some say her speedy acquiescence was to deflect Mahisha from the building wrath of the Mother Goddess – the two Goddesses functioned in concert to bring down a tyrant’s rule. The first son of Maahishmati, the last to be born so malevolent.

It served dual purpose too. The land where before only shrubs and thickets had been seen, became home to some of the best timber across the sweep of Jambudweepa.

Made fertile and sanctified by the divine touch of the River Mother, Maahishmati metamorphosed to civilisation; she _evolved_.

It was soon time for the Mother Ganga to return to her original course. In her magnanimity, she left a bunch of her tresses along Maahishmati, coalescing with her later down the waterfall to flow together to the ocean. The tributary called herself after the first son of the soil she fed and his mother, Mahishi.

The familiarity of the tale soothes the heat along her nape. She smiles at the thin line of Mahishi, her heart fuller than it has been since her marriage. She will have some of the scriptures here sent to her mother. The older woman will love the fuel to her imagination.

And someday, someday, Sivagami swears, she will go back to her roots. Just, not now. Not yet. She has her responsibilities, and if she expects others to do their duty, she must fulfil hers first.

 

**Author's Note:**

> The title 'Prabhava' stands for both impact and origins, and both apply. The myth in the fic is a casual reworking of the legendary tale of Mahishasurmardini. And Mahishasura's mother was supposedly a she-buffalo named Mahishi... The play with all the 'Mahish'-words here is perhaps my most favourite thing about the fic.
> 
> Heavens, this is so strewn with foreshadowing and references - I am absolutely embarrassed!  
> Really, Sivagami might be the only saving grace. 
> 
> And I am so sorry that I am late. It may not qualify at all, but I fell asleep (on my computer desk, no less - a first - I had thought only my study table would ever be the victim of my drooling) after writing this at 2 am, and I am only getting to editing now. I am counting on Avani di being lenient. *hides*
> 
> Thanks to all for reading this. Kindly leave a word or two. Bricks and tomatoes are welcome too (no eggs, though - I prefer eating them). :D


End file.
